Levin: Defense employees should be worried about sequestration

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) warned on Sunday that those employed in the defense industry should be worried about the possibility of sequestration.

"You should be worried if you have a defense job," the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The looming fiscal cliff includes an automatic cut to Defense Department budget of $500 billion over 10 years, starting on Jan. 2. if not averted by Congress action.

“The key here is whether or not the Republicans will move away from the ideologically rigid position, which has been the Grover Norquist pledge, which most of them signed, that they will not go for additional revenues,” Levin said.

Levin said that taxes on the wealthy should go up – either effective tax rates or real tax rates – and that loopholes needed to be closed on “offshore loopholes.”